Take You to the Movies Tonight, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld
December 20, 2014 Martha Thomases 3 Comments
My plans for Christmas Day have been trashed. And it’s all Kim Jong-un’s fault.
See, like Jews everywhere, I like to spend Christmas going to the movies, with Chinese food either before or after (sometimes both!). This year, because I’m going to a wedding, I’ll be in Los Angeles, and I can go with my son. I wanted to see Into the Woods because Stephen Sondheim, but he wanted to see The Interview.
That was fine with me. I like Seth Rogen. I like James Franco. I thought This Is the End was surprisingly hilarious and touching. I was looking forward to it.
Now I can’t go. Sony cancelled the release, after being threatened by hackers that there would be a terrorist attack on movie theaters showing the film.
I didn’t think I would ever live long enough to agree with both Peter King and Choire Sicha about the same thing at the same time. But I do. Canceling the film was a cowardly act.
Mitt Romney, while he considers another run for the White House, thinks Sony should put the film online, for free. He suggests that people who want to see the film donate five dollars to fight Ebola, a line of logic I have trouble understanding. I mean, Seth Rogen, James Franco and the other filmmakers are job creators, aren’t they? Shouldn’t they enjoy the profits of their labors?
As Americans, we like to think we’re brave and true, committed to the ideals embodied in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We fight for democracy around the world. These colors don’t run. Yada yada yada.
But a couple of people with computer skills can bring us to our knees, quivering in fear.
I’m not Sony, and I don’t own a movie theater, nor a shopping mall containing a movie theater. I don’t know how specific the threats were. Personally, I think it would be impossible to hit every single theater showing the movie, especially in smaller towns in the middle of the country. Most likely, the target would be in Los Angeles or New York. I’m prepared to risk that, but I can understand other points of view.
And I don’t think this is censorship. The government is not stopping the distribution of this movie. A corporation is not required to release a film. Individual theaters are not required to show a film. Freedom of speech includes the right to not “speak” (or, in this case, show a film).
Still, I would’ve liked to have the choice about seeing it.
A lot of the commentary I’ve read about the decision to pull the film boils down to, “Well, who cares? It’s a crappy movie with frat-boy level humor. It’s not like it’s high art.” This makes me really angry. First of all, I like a lot of frat-boy level humor, and I’m entitled to make the choice to spend my money on seeing it, if I so desire. Second, artistic freedom is for all of us, not just for the good stuff.
In fact, I would argue that only defending the “good stuff” is, in itself, a limitation on freedom of expression. Lots of people make commercial art I don’t like. I don’t go see it, or I bitch about it, or both. I don’t stop them from making it, or stop other people from seeing it.
That’s un-American.
Even if I didn’t want to see the film, at this point I would buy a ticket just to tell those hacker bullies to go fuck themselves. Sony has made that impossible.
Some theater owners have come up with a clever way to convey the same message. They didn’t need Sony’s approval to do so.
As I write this, we don’t know who, precisely, the hackers are. Until this morning, I thought they worked for the North Korean government, but I heard a theory on the morning news that it’s actually some kind of blackmail stunt, involving money, not politics. I wasn’t entirely awake, so I don’t remember the details. In any case, the whole episode has already had a chilling effect on other filmmakers.
If I was Sony, I would put The Interview on VOD (video on demand) immediately. I would charge a premium because it’s a studio picture, and see how many individual households want to stand up to the bullies. As reported in the link above, they aren’t going to do this.
Seth Rogen and James Franco, if you’re reading this (and you are, aren’t you?), e-mail me. I think this would be a spectacular crowd-funding campaign. You’d make back the money, the film would be seen (and judged) and we could, as a community, stand up to that punk in Pyongyang.
Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, is so far behind in her movie-going that she could see almost anything on Thursday.
Mike Gold
December 20, 2014 - 12:20 pm
Interesting. “I think it would be impossible to hit every single theater showing the movie, especially in smaller towns in the middle of the country.” So, what the fuck, let the middle of the country theater and mall goers get blown up.
I babble on about this issue in this space on Monday, so I’ll leave that this of the discussion to that. But the idea of making a death list and making sure you’re not on it seems a bit disingenuous.
You’re right. It’s not censorship. And Sony didn’t do squat. And I completely understand why all of the major theater chains and most of the minor ones dropped it. I can be cynical and say they did it just to save themselves from liabilities, but I don’t know these people so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they are trying to save lives. I can’t blame them for that.
You’ll see the movie. As for Sony, this movie and even the email leaks are the least of their problems. And that doesn’t bother me one bit.
jill zyvoloski
December 20, 2014 - 6:10 pm
Thanks for this very wonderfully concise and highly thought provoking article Ms. Martha TT. Regarding “provoking,” some thoughts have been rumbling through my brain since seeing Seth Rogen talk about “The Interview” on The Colbert Report. To recap; Rogen’s latest film release portrays Kim Jong-Un as an ultimate buffoon. Then the character is assassinated.
My challenges with this? Yes, on the one hand, I want you to be able to see the film on Christmas day with your son. Surely, we who grew up with the local chapter meetings of the ACLU in our home, are free speech advocates. We’ve also have as part of our collective experience, watching and cringing, as violent foreign and even American fundamentalists have threatened and murdered comedians, cartoonists, and writers who have elaborated about ideas which they felt must be censored. And we’ve hated the haters and defended the right to have satire. So I’m asking myself why I do feel conflicted in advocating for Rogen’s latest picture to be out there in the theaters next week?
I think its in the breadth of what it undertakes and ugly fatal ramifications of the bees in the bonnets of those stirred up by that breadth. I have deeply enjoyed barbs drawn from real world events, by satirical humorists, Colbert, Mayer, Stewart, Oliver, Borowitz, and even Voltaire who said “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” Although Seth Rogen said his intention was to base his movie on things happening in the “real world” is this what he has actually done in this case? Purportedly “The Interview” has a some facts based on research, but also a lot of puerile humor about the North Korean regime, and in this movie, a fictionalized Kim Jong Un gets killed. Rogen’s prior movies seem to me to be more like the works of Aristophanes, Moliere and Wilde, centered on poking at societal fopperies and how we silly humans bungle situations. Rogen’s last movie was pure fantasy, a farce about the particular problems that a biblical end-times would bring on Hollywood. His next movie is purportedly to be something titled “Sausage Party” and who knows what it will be about, even with that name.
While I am all right with Rogen’s more personally-based humor, I am cringing about a couple of points with this new movie. Again, in this movie, the Kim Jong-Un character is assassinated. Perhaps it was just me alone who was also uncomfortable with the violence portrayed in the 2004 animation by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, “Team America, The World’s Police” which seemed to foretell the dismantling of Iraq, including the execution of Sadam. My devil’s advocate brain function puts forth this similar scenario, wondering what ramifications it might have: How would we handle it, if some major studio released a comedy that had as its premise, the buffoonery of a fictional character,”President Barack Obama” who runs a fictitious country “The United States of America.” Let’s say that the movie included visceral bathroom-type humor about egregiously stupid, backwards Americans and that the plot shows our president being assassinated. . . Anyone else have a little twinge of cringe? I am wondering, if it is “being assassinated ” which I find most objectionable. And if it is doubly so, due to this specific time in the history for our increasingly violent -trending world. So in one sense it sounds like I am advocating for caving into terrorist threats that we should pipe down in our free speech. But in another sense, I can’t help but wonder. What is the point in directly baiting repressive totalitarian regimes- by stepping on their dragons’ tails with heavy heavy boots and then saying “No way are you repress me.” Seems childish.
I’m certainly not saying that I feel that people should hack a studio or that they should make murderous threats in response to my “Obama” version scenario. However, the discomfort I’d feel with a picture studio release of something like “The Interview” with my own “Dear Leader” as the central character, makes me wonder: What was Sony thinking here? Poke an angry wasp’s nest much?
Martha Thomases
December 21, 2014 - 8:29 am
Mike: I may have expressed myself poorly, but what I meant to say is that if there is a death list, those of us in New York and Los Angeles are most likely to be on it (possibly Washington, DC as well). I wanted to say that people in the middle of the country are most likely to be safe.
Jill: It’s not up to me to second-guess the creative decisions in a film I haven’t seen. We can have a whole other discussion about who decides what gets released — or even made — in our capitalistic studio system. I’ve read that Sony and Rogen disagreed about including Kim Jong Un, but that is a matter of contracts and leverage, details I don’t know.
I say it’s extortion and I say the hell with it.
Rene
December 21, 2014 - 8:57 am
Jill –
Excuse my frankness, but worrying about the sensibilities of totalitarian leaders sounds like spinelessness to me. Fuck totalitarian leaders. Anything bad that happens to them, up to and including being depicted as assassination victims in spoof movies, is just the way karma works.
Comparing that with the way people would feel if a democratically-ellected leader were the target of the joke is just an example of misguided moral relativism. Kim Jong Un is not comparable to Obama, any more than a husband who lawfully marries a willing woman is comparable to a rapist who kidnaps a woman and violates her.
And even if the target of the joke were Obama, so what? As long as the movie producers aren’t actually conspiring to kill the person for real, let them do it.
George Haberberger
December 21, 2014 - 1:43 pm
I agree with Martha and Rene. Yeah, that happens sometimes.
I’ve read that Sony cancelled the movie because theater chains refused to carry it due to their fear of bombings and the subsequent lawsuits the undoubtedly would follow. Because you know, lawsuits would target the easy defendant, not the actual bomber.
When you buy a ticket to a baseball game, text on the back of the ticket says something to the effect that you will hold harmless the baseball team, the league and the stadium owners if you get a line drive to the face. In other words, you assume certain risks when you attend a baseball game. So what if the back of the ticket to this and any other movie said you absolved the theater from acts beyond their control? Yeah that sounds like a drastic step to take to see a movie, but it is world we live in.
jill zyvoloski
December 21, 2014 - 5:05 pm
Apologies to all that waded through my prior un-edited cough syrup driven ramble, which I was trying to un-post, and couldn’t.
I wish I had just said that portraying a living real/fictional leader from another country and a culture not into our outlandish humor, and having that leader get killed, is culturally insensitive and in bad taste. I did base my ideas on this, because of what Seth Rogen describes on the Colbert Report. Review the interview with Rogen and see if it doesn’t sound at least a bit like he is gleefully daring them to go ballistic over it. Frat-boy style.
Now egging on Totalitarian states. . . . that’s entertainment.
Rene
December 21, 2014 - 6:57 pm
Jill –
It probably is in bad taste. Can’t say without watching the movie. And there is a part of me, the religious part of me, that knows that feeling glee over the death of any human being, even a dictator, is not good. But man, I can’t bring myself to care much about a guy that holds hundreds of political prisoners in slave camps.
The way I disagree with much of the Left is that I feel that human rights should transcend culture. That certain standards of right and wrong are universal. But I also recognize that there is plenty of insensitiveness to other cultures around. I dunno how much of the movie is offensive to the people of North Korea and how much is just offensive to Kim?
jill zyvoloski
December 21, 2014 - 8:18 pm
Your points are good. I don’t care about his feelings either. Its just that from what I heard from Rogen own mouth, it seems likely that the the movie could bring about violence and not exactly hasten any steps to understanding or diplomacy. Again, sorry for making you read my horribly written diatribe. I did intend to sleep on it rather than post it.
Mike Gold
December 22, 2014 - 8:43 am
“I wanted to say that people in the middle of the country are most likely to be safe.” Damn, I hate to argue against New Yorkers’ lust for proprietary paranoia, but… have you ever seen where our missile bases are? How about our military bases? Do you really think all of them are in New York City and Los Angeles? The vast American farmland is mostly in the middle of the country — trash it and you’ve got a de facto siege. Where are our planes built? Our weapons? Our bombs? The water and fuel pipelines, the delivery truck depots.
I realize that as a pacifist you tend not to think of such things as strategic importance. But if you want to declare even a “modern” war on a nation, you take out the military supply chain. You can do it with briefcase nukes, with car bombs, with IEDs, with suicide bombers.
Blow up New York City and you’ve offed a bunch of rich executives. They will pop up like cold sores at a STD victims convention. Los Angeles? OK, blow it up and it’ll be harder to make The Interview 2, but we’ve still got Vancouver. If you think living in Minnesota, Missouri or Texas is going to provide you with safe harbor… check your life insurance policy before you move.
Martha Thomases
December 22, 2014 - 8:49 am
Jill, in THIS IS THE END, the same creative team made fun of real people — themselves — by name. I would guess (and this is only a guess) that they thought if they could take it, so could Kim.
Mike, the threat was to movie theaters showing the movie, not missile bases. Personally, I don’t think they are capable of messing with either one.
Mike Gold
December 22, 2014 - 8:58 am
Martha, your statement “I wanted to say that people in the middle of the country are most likely to be safe.” has nothing to do with going to the movies. It’s about where you are safe.
Even if your statement only applied to movie-goers, your statement remains provincial. Hard as it may be to believe, but most of the movie theaters in America are outside of New York City and Los Angeles. But I’ll go with that for a minute and ask you this question:
What is the difference between blowing up one thousand people in a multiplex in New York City and Los Angeles and blowing up one thousand people in a multiplex ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD? Are the lives of New Yorkers worth THAT much more than the lives of the people living in the rest of the planet?
Martha Thomases
December 22, 2014 - 9:04 am
Blowing up a movie theater is an act of terrorism wherever it takes place. And there are thousands and thousands of potential targets in this country.
I think we can assume that the Korean hackers are not capable of blowing up every single theater in the country. Certainly not all at the same time.
Therefore, they would probably select the target that would gain them the most attention. In my opinion, this would be in a major city, most likely New York or Los Angeles (where the most media are based).
Certainly Chicago, Washington, and other cities could be targets. However, I find it hard to believe that they would select Youngstown, Ohio, as the place to make their stand.
Mike Gold
December 22, 2014 - 9:17 am
Youngstown is near plenty of targets. Food distribution — Krogers (America’s largest supermarket chain), Meijers. Tire manufacturers. Car plants (GM has one of its largest in the outskirts of Youngstown). Youngstown is on the Great Lakes; forget about the fresh water pipelines; think of the damage to our shipping lanes. Youngstown is not safe. Outside of our vast deserts, I can’t think of a single spot in America that would be safe.
Oh. By the way. At no point did I say anything about blowing up all the movie theaters, let alone all at once. I said there are more of them outside of NYC and LA. The fact that you thought they’d have to blow them ALL up reinforces my point.